1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document processing system including a printing apparatus that can perform printing and a post-processing apparatus that can execute post-processing on a print product.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many of conventional printing companies are still using large-scale printing apparatuses, such as offset-type printing machines, to produce print products according to orders and deliver the finished products to clients.
On the other hand, recent electro-photographic printing apparatuses can provide high-speed and high-quality outputs. A business model newly introduced for such advanced printing apparatuses is called “Print On Demand (i.e., POD)”, which can accept an order of a relatively smaller lot of job.
In the POD market, instead of using a conventional large-scale printing machine or system, advanced functions of digital image processing apparatuses including digital copying machines and digital multifunction peripherals can be fully used to realize a digital print of electronic data. An imposition application usable in this case can determine a print layout of an input original that may include image data and vector format (e.g., Portable Document Format (PDF)) data. In this manner, the POD market is highly digitized compared to the conventional market of the printing industry and a computer-based management/control can be widely employed.
A near-line finisher is a post-processing apparatus (i.e., a finisher) that can perform post-processing (i.e., finishing processing) on print products. The near-line finisher can communicate with a printing apparatus and its control apparatus (e.g., a computer). However, the near-line finisher is basically independent of the printing apparatus and has various functions excellent in both extensibility and alternativeness. The near-line finisher can receive an electronic job ticket of, for example, Job Definition Format (JDF), via a communication tool, and can process the job according to the contents described in the job ticket. In this respect, the near-line finisher can contribute to automation of print processing.
Although the job ticket can designate detailed contents for automating the processing performed by a finisher, the finisher generally requires an operator's manual work to set each print product to the finisher after the print product is output from the printer. For example, when a print product requires cutting processing that can be performed by the finisher, a register mark indicating a cutting position may be printed on a print product. The finisher performs cutting processing according to the mark.
If the register mark is printed on all pages of a print product and the bookbinding processing is performed, the marks may mutually deviate in registration position and some of the printed marks may remain on the print product without being removed in the cutting operation. Therefore, as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-272780, it may be useful to print register marks only on the leading page because the marks printed on the topmost sheet are sufficient to be recognized.
However, if information available for an operator is limited to only the printed register marks, it may be difficult for the operator to identify the correct orientation of each print product relative to a finisher. In many cases, a job creator (i.e., an operator who generates a job) is different from a finisher's operator who actually sets a print product to a finisher. Therefore, the finisher's operator may ask the job creator about the setting direction of each print product. Thus, the work efficiency may be reduced.